1. NEO-LATIN. LATIM RENASCENTISTA E PÓS-RENASCENTISTA,1300-2000.

Our
objective or desideratum, as already indicated in other publications, is to devise
a methodus for learning modern Latin, that is, for acquiring proficiency in Neolatin,
quickly and easily. Unlike other methodus already in use, for centuries, this
one relies from the start on the reading of texts of all ages, written by
authors of the whole world. The internet constitutes already an indispensable
instrument for the achievement of our
aim. The texts therein can be handled with facility and absolute freedom to
acquire proficiency in reading and writing and in creating a corpus of usable
new vocabulary and expressions, gathered directly from good writers of all ages
and from very different geographic origins.

Far from
having disappeared, despite the immense catastrophes that befell on the Roman Europe,
and thanks to the spread of Christianity, Latin has remained without
interruption a literary and spoken idiom throughout the world until the
twentieth century, as evidenced by the abundant production in this language of
works in prose, and in verse, both in America and in the many European
countries. Contemporary Latin, modern Latin, living Latin or Neolatin are
expressions that relate to the contemporary use of classical Latin. The period
of contemporary Latin naturally succeeds that of the medieval Latin.

Let us
emphasize here that, the expression Neolatin does not designate a new language,
such as Peano’s Latino sine flexione, but simply a period in the history of the
Latin language; the Latin of the Neolatin epoch being only the classic Latin
language, both written and colloquial, in use in our days. The task of
contemporary Latinists is to incorporate into the framework of classical Latin
grammar the new syntactic elements and vocabularies, that have been formed
throughout History, since the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Medieval period,
in the Renaissance and in the modern age, especially in the 16th, 17th and 18th
centuries.

The
contemporary use of Latin, therefore, requires us to know and use the Latin of
various eras and from many geographic regions. But, contrarily to the academic
or scholarly trends, in writing Latin nowadays, as a simple and manageable
instrument for international communication, our endeavours should not be to
reproduce, ipsis litteris et ipsis grammaticis, the hardest pieces of Latin
ever written, but, on the contrary, to write Latin as we speak, colloquially,
with the same and simple syntax of the great vernacular languages of our age,
daughters of the Roman idiom, once spoken by the soldiers, the laborers and the
slaves of the Empire throughout Europe.

01.1 Neo-latin, Neolatinus. Neolatino in Romance languages, in German, Neulatein, is now understood as a most important phase in the development of the written Medieval Latin language, a transformation that began under the influence of the linguistic ideals of the Humanism, aiming at the recovery of the languages and culture of antiquity, Classical Latin, Classical Greek and Hebrew. It started in Italy at the age of Poggio, Petrarch, Dante and Boccaccio, and spread slowly to other countries, arriving in the Scandinavian countries together with the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Along this time path and geographical dislocation, Neolatin underwent several metamorphoses, most notably as a consequence of the invention of printing. Medieval Latin was transformed into Neo-Latin mostly after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

After that historical event, the world saw the beginning of the great Portuguese and Spanish geographical discoveries, the Reformation, the expansion of Christianity to America and the Far East,the commercial and scientific revolutions, the colonization of Africa, America and Asia. From 1400 until 1700, Europe experienced complete cultural, religious, social and scientific transformations. During all this full period of three complete centuries,Neo-latin was the only international and school language. For these reasons, Neo-latin played a noteworthy strong bearing on the growing vernacular languages, be it of Latin, Germanic or Slavic origins. To the new maturing national languages, Neo-Latin became the linguistic canon to be immitated, being, just as today, the original source of new or rare words and of terms that designate concepts of importance for European culture. Neo-Latin was the language of the first world economic and cultural globalization process. As the Germans realized Neo-Latin is just Modern Latin.

For those endeavouring to write Latin nowadays, Erasmus constitutes both a model of modern Latinitas, at its best, and a copious source of colloquial simple, vivid Latin for social intercourse and scientific usage. Few works have provoked so much of a controversy in the history of literature as the "Dialogue on the Right Pronunciation of Latin and Greek Languages", the work of this great Dutch philologist of the Renaissance. In this book, published in 1528, he suggests new pronunciations for the two classical languages, instead of the traditional Byzantine pronunciation, heard until his time. Although he was not the first scholar to argue that the pronunciation of his time could be different from that of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Erasmus presented his views so systematically and with such a conviction that the new pronunciations proposed for the two classical languages were called Erasmian. In this Dialogue, apart from the purely literary themes, Erasmus, with abusive language, also finds opportunity to deal with many other issues of his time (educational, religious, and social), in a way that still impresses, thanks to the clarity of his reflections and the independence of his mind.

Let us emphasize here that, the expression Neolatin does not designate a new language, such as Peano’s Latino sine flexione, but simply a period in the history of the Latin language; the Latin of the Neolatin epoch being only the classic Latin language, both written and colloquial, in use in our days. The task of contemporary Latinists is to incorporate into the framework of classical Latin grammar the new syntactic elements and vocabularies, that have been formed throughout History, since the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Medieval period, in the Renaissance and in the modern age, especially in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

The contemporary use of Latin, therefore, requires us to know and use the Latin of various eras and from many geographic regions. But, contrarily to the academic or scholarly trends, in writing Latin nowadays, as a simple and manageable instrument for international communication, our endeavours should not be to reproduce, ipsis litteris et ipsis grammaticis, the hardest pieces of Latin ever written, but, on the contrary, to write Latin as we speak, colloquially, with the same and simple syntax of the great vernacular languages of our age, daughters of the Roman idiom, once spoken by the soldiers, the laborers and the slaves of the Empire throughout Europe.

The original orthography has been modified to conform with that presently used in the Vatican, and in Central Europe, it distinguishes u from v, medieval forms are modernized. Only the first word of a sentence is written with majuscule. Diacritics have been removed from the Greek texts. As for the reliability and quality of this work, we must caution, as they used to do centuries ago, that precipitatus fuit verius quam editum, therefore, the reader should consult sources to correct the failures that will certainly be found. It was hard to resist introducing J as consonantal I, a device that greatly improves intelligibility of Latin texts by speakers of Romance languages.To substitute medieval forms the very good and affordable Bantam New College Latin and English Dictionary by John C. Traupman was used. Cf.

When we talk about Neo-Latin literature we are usually referring to texts written in Latin from the dawn of the Renaissance, and subsequently during,the following centuries. On the whole, scholars agree on the use of the term. Jozef IJsewijn, who was one of the leading experts in the field, gave the following,definition in his monumental Companion to Neo-Latin Studies: By “Neo-Latin“ I mean all writings in Latin since the dawn of humanism in,Italy from about 1300 A.D., viz. the age of Dante and Petrarch, down to our,time (IJsewijn 1990, Preface V).

'The modern Latin literature is generally referred to as the Neo-Latin literature. It is the literature which, from Italy, has gradually replaced the literature of the Middle Ages in all the European countries of the 14th to the 16th century, through its deliberate detachment from the Medieval language tradition and its reorientation to the classical Latin of antiquity, and to a limited extent to the present. The main period of the Neo-Latin literature, which is manifoldly structured, extends until about 1800 ... (Ludwig 1997, 324).

Within the short span of approximately 25 years the study of Latin literature from the period ca. 1300-1800 (usually called Neo-Latin) has developed immensely: whereas earlier research almost exclusively dealt with very few authors already famous for their vernacular writing, scientific impact or innovative humanism, a large amount of hitherto unknown Neo-Latin literature has now been made accessible through editions, handbooks, surveys, translations, websites etc.

But this successful activity has not led to an easy recognition of the field, either among classicists or within the university system.There are still a number of basic, unresolved problems regarding method, unity, interdisciplinary status, relation to classical studies, etc. SO has asked an experienced practitioner in the field, Prof. Hans Helander of Uppsala University, to give a report on the present situation. His challenge is met by a panel of prominent scholars from Europe and North America. After their comments, prof. Helander sums up the discussion. The debate is concluded by a comprehensive bibliography.Neo-latin Studies Significance and Prospects by Hans Helander.

04 BIBLIOGRAFIA DE NEOLATINO ON-LINE, AN ANALYTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ON-LINE NEO-LATIN TEXTS. DANA F. SUTTON, The University of California, Irvine.

A PROFESSORA DANA SUTTON escreve:

The enormous profusion of literary texts posted on the World Wide Web will no doubt strike future historians as remarkable and important. But this profusion brings with it an urgent need for many specialized on-line bibliographies. The present one is an analytic bibliography of Latin texts written during the Renaissance and later that are freely available to the general public on the Web (texts posted in access-restricted sites, and Web sites offering electronic texts and digitized photograpic reproductions for sale are not included).

This page was first posted January 1, 1999 and most recently updated on April 20, 2018 . The reader may be interested to know that it currently contains 58,495 entries. I urge all those are able to suggest additions or corrections to this bibliography as well as those who post new texts on the Web, to inform me by e-mail, so that this bibliography can be kept accurate and up to date. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all the individuals who have supplied me with corrections and information. I extend especial thanks to Klaus Graf, Tommy Tyberg and J. R. Stockton, who are responsible for the addition of many hundreds of bibliographical items to this list.

The above text is medieval. See below the same Swedish medieval text in modern orthography. The modernization of its orthography makes it neo-latin, pending of possible grammatical corrections. [17/04/2018].

This document contains a short Latin text by the Humanist Damiao de Goes. This Portuguese Latin writer, who lived in the XVI century, was born two years after the discovery of Brazil; He was educated and lived in the court of King Dom Emmanuel, the Venturous, and, therefore, his Latin texts, like that of his many contemporary writers, may be taken as representative of the Latin language as used in Portugal and Spain for common oral intercourse, correspondence and literature. The edition of 1554 of the Urbis Olisiponis Descriptio is here reproduced with two Portuguese translations, one of 1937, published in transcribed Latin and translated by Raul Machado as Lisboa de Quinhentos; and a more recent one by Jose da Felicidade Alves, named Descricao da Cidade de Lisboa pelo Cavaleiro Portugues Damiao de Gois ao Inclito Principe Dom. Henrique, Infante de Portugal (Livros Horizonte). A list of the works by Damianus a Goes available for download in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and in the Bibliotheque nacionale de France is supplied. A roll of Goes complete works is borrowed from Arlindo Correia excelent study Damiao de Gois, in two parts, on line. Confer also, Damiao de Goes Correspondencia Latina (Portugaliae Monumenta Neolatina Vol IX),.Versão integral disponivel em digitalis.uc.pt , Associacao Portuguesa de Estudos Neolatinos, Universidade de Coimbra. Cf.

"Latin in the Middle Ages: Two assumptions frequently made about Latin in the medieval period are that it was simply the language of the Christian church and that the standard of Latin use was universally poor and not worthy of interest. However, the huge number and range of texts produced in Latin during this long period clearly demonstrate that despite times when education dropped in standard (as can happen at any period of history) or was limited to a small percentage of the population, those who were able to gain an education, primarily in monastic and cathedral schools, produced texts on a wide variety of subjects and in a wide variety of styles, often combining elements from classical learning with Biblical and patristic elements alongside elements from contemporary culture and personal experience, and reflecting many of the changes and dramas that occurred during the period.

Diversity: If there is one way to characterize Medieval Latin, in fact, it is precisely its variety. In terms of the range of purposes for which Latin was employed, diversity was not new: as an everyday language previously, Latin had been used perfectly ordinarily for every function that language might be used for in speech and writing. Accordingly even in classical times the language had been diverse in its form too, usage differing according to the age or sex of the speaker, the topic of discourse, the register being used, and so on. However, we know rather less than we might wish about this variation in Classical Latin because of the limits of the surviving evidence. Written texts can give only indirect hints of the diversity of spoken Latin, the range of functions carried out in writing rather than in speech was clearly different, and the greater distance in time means that more material has been lost or destroyed in the intervening years. More important still, though, is the fact that from the first century BC Latin developed a highly standardized prestige form, namely Classical Latin, which was adopted as the variety of the language used in many of the functions carried out in writing. This means that the surviving texts typically reflect some attempt at conformity to this standard to a greater or lesser degree. Furthermore the texts that have survived through the ages into the modern world have tended to be the most highly regarded ones, being giants of literature, oratory, poetry, and the like, and these were most likely to conform to or even define this standard. Indeed their transmission and survival was encouraged precisely by their Classical Latin status. Classical Latin, then, remained hugely influential as a standard for the language down to the medieval period and beyond. Great texts in that variety were read, and the sophistication of their language acknowledged in the writing of Latin in the Middle Ages, again with factors such as register and text type determining the extent to which writers would feel the need to attempt to conform to the Classical standard. The result is that alongside texts that try hard to meet the Classical norms we find many texts, especially ones that are not highly literary (e.g. accounts), in which the pressure of tradition and great literature as a model was not felt so strongly and other influences — such as the effect of the contemporary everyday languages — can be seen.

Linguistic features: The ways in which writers used Latin free from the constraints of the Classical norms and the effects of this are the key to appreciating the diversity of Medieval Latin. There is a complexity that we can observe in written texts for the Middle Ages that we simply lack such good evidence for in the period when Latin was a native language. Far from being universally poor, we see the considerable skill of writers moulding the language to their needs. There are many dimensions in which the linguistic diversity can be observed. The range of text types is clearly one, and we might note especially the development of rhythmic and rhyming verse, which is found as a new poetic form besides poetry written in the Classical Latin verse forms (based on syllable weight). However, there are some important linguistic differences that are frequently encountered in Medieval Latin that can make it look different from the Classical language, sometimes quite markedly so.

Spelling: The most obvious difference in appearance between Medieval Latin and Classical Latin is in how words were spelled. Although Classical spellings were generally retained for inherited vocabulary, changes in pronunciation which had happened over the centuries — many the same as those which had led to the divergence of the everyday Romance languages from Latin and from each other — influenced the corresponding spelling of the words. Thus we often find ci before a vowel where the Classical spelling would have been ti (e.g racio for ratio), and the diphthongs ae and oe which had come to be pronounced the same as the simple e sound are often written e. (We also find as a result examples where ae or oe are written where the expected spelling would be just e.) Other alternations in spelling arising from changes in pronunciation are the interchange of b and v, the insertion or deletion of h, the use of single consonants for double ones (and vice versa), and the substitution of y for i. Sometimes spellings were also influenced by the pronunciation of a word in the everyday local language related to or derived from the Latin word (or thought to have been so). For new vocabulary the writers often faced the challenge of having no certain model to follow. While writers of Latin still had some sense of words having ‘a spelling’, inherited from the standardized Classical language, this principle was already undermined by variation, and for borrowed vocabulary, the source language (Old or Middle English, Anglo-Norman French, etc.) typically had no single standard spelling that could be borrowed. Indeed, the word in the source language would usually have had slightly different pronunciations in different areas in any case. Moreover, frequently the borrowed vocabulary would contain sounds not found in inherited Latin vocabulary, such as the ‘sh’ sound of English and French. Writers would therefore use the Latin alphabet as best they could to represent the words they wished to write. We find some extreme examples in British Medieval Latin of the resulting variation, such as ‘maeremium’ (‘timber’, borrowed from Anglo-Norman merim and related words, originally derived from Late Latin materiamen) which is attested in more than 50 different spellings (e.g. maerremium, mahermium, maisremium, etc.). Finally, we must remember that writing materials were expensive in the Middle Ages, and it was extremely common for scribes to use abbreviations. Typically abbreviation was indicated by some form of mark or stroke made through, above, or immediately following the letter preceding the position of the omitted letter(s). Many modern editions of texts ‘expand’ such abbreviations to make reading the texts easier, but the correct way to expand such forms is not always clear, particularly at the end of a word, where scribes often seem to have used abbreviation as a convenient way to avoid giving a borrowed word an explicit (grammatical) ending.

Grammar:The most important differences in the grammar of Medieval Latin again lie in the greater flexibility allowed in the use of the various forms of words and constructions, alongside the general continuation of most of the Classical grammatical system. The inflectional system was not always used as consistently or rigidly as in Classical Latin. Thus, prepositions and verbs which would have been followed by a noun or adjective in one case in Classical Latin are not uncommonly found followed by a word in a different case. Similarly, conjunctions which in Classical Latin would have been followed by a verb in the subjunctive mood might be found followed by a verb in the indicative (or vice versa). Also, verbs which had been deponent in Classical Latin (i.e. had passive forms but active meanings) are often found used in active forms (in the same meanings). New constructions also arose, in some instances used as an alternative to existing ones. Most significant among these was the increase in use of the indirect statement construction consisting of quod or quia followed by a clause with a finite verb (sometimes indicative, sometimes subjunctive) instead of the Classical way of expressing the same meaning (using the accusative and infinitive construction). The quod or quia construction had in fact already existed in the Classical language, but only in restricted circumstances, and it rose to prominence not only in Medieval Latin but also in the Romance languages (cf. modern French je dis que …).

Vocabulary: The vast majority of Medieval Latin vocabulary is inherited from earlier stages of the language and used in ways and with meanings that were a normal part of those earlier periods' usage. Still, we see that inherited words frequently do develop or show new meanings of various kinds, including restrictions of existing meanings, metaphorical and metonymic extensions of existing meanings, and meanings arising from connections with other related or similar words. For instance, we find regulariter in the sense of ‘in accordance with a monastic rule’, pupula can refer to the eye and a disease of the eye as well as to just the pupil, and purare ‘to free from dirt’ is found more generally than just the ceremonial context in the Classical evidence. The new meanings are usually found in addition to the continuation of one or more Classical ones; less often we find such words used only in new senses. Sometimes the changes in meaning even affected grammatical words, and as a result the grammar of the language has the appearance of having changed: for instance, we frequently find the pronouns se (‘himself, herself, itself’) and eum (‘him etc.’) interchanged. Writers were also able to coin new words. Sometimes these were based on existing Latin vocabulary, such as deriving new nouns in -tio from verbs in order to denote the ‘act or process’ of the verb (and often also the ‘product or result’ too), or adverbs from existing adjectives (e.g. querule ‘plaintively’ from querulus ‘plaintive’). The most striking type of new coinage, though, was of course the borrowed vocabulary. When a writer came across something to be expressed for which there was no existing Latin word (e.g. a new invention or social position) or the writer did not know the right Latin word, the typical response was to adopt and adapt a word from that writer's native vocabulary, making minimal changes as necessary to fit it into the Latin grammatical system. Such changes might include adding a suitable inflectional ending, normally that of the most common pattern for that kind of word (e.g. the first conjugation endings for a verb).

Neo-Latin: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, at the end of the V century, Latin continued in general use for the next 1000 years as the official language of the Christian Church. Latin continued to be used as an official language, side by side with Greek, in the Byzantine Empire, until its conquest by the Turks, in 1492. During these ten centuries the Latin language experienced changes in pronuntiation, grammar, orthography and vocabulary, as stated above. Neo-Latin is the last phase in the history of the Latin language, having flourished from about 1400 to 1800. It was contemporaneous, therefore, of the nine infant Romance languages, that had gradually derived from the spoken Latin, in the different regions of Europe. During and after the Renaissance, Neo-Latin became the new international written language of Europe. When the Romance languages attain their adulthood, around the end of the XVIII century, Neo-Latin will be abandoned for political reasons." End of quote;

Modern Latin is the Latin language as written in our own days. Modern latinists respect the morphology of classical Latin but display a greater syntactical freedom. Contrarily to practitioners of other auxiliary languages, modern latinists have free access to an extremely vast and varied literature, an immense thesaurus inherited both from the Classical Latin and the Neo-Latin. Just as the medieval writers, present day latinists must develop considerable skill to mould the language to their needs.

Far from having disappeared, Latin has remained without interruption a literary and spoken idiom throughout the world until the twentieth century, as evidenced by the abundant production in this language of works in prose, and in verse, both in America and in the many European countries. Contemporary Latin, modern Latin, living Latin or Neolatin are expressions that relate to the contemporary use of classical Latin. The period of contemporary Latin naturally succeeds that of the medieval Latin.

Tom Hendrickson. Why So Few Of Us Teach Neo-Latin And Why More Of Us Should

"Latin was the language of Caesar and Vergil, but it was also the language of literature, theology, government, science, and scholarship for most of European history.

It never struck me as strange that while students would certainly be reading Caesar and Vergil (at least if they continued on in Latin), they would almost surely never encounter the material from “most of European history.” Yet some of the most significant writings in European history, especially during the Renaissance and Early Modern era, are in Latin. Petrarch wrote in Latin, as did Erasmus, Thomas More, Martin Luther, Copernicus, Spinoza, and Milton. It is not an accident that we do not read these authors.

The Latin of the Renaissance and Early Modern era is broadly known as Neo-Latin. The term itself is unfortunate, much like the term “Classics,” though for different reasons. While “Classics” sounds vague and pretentious, “Neo-Latin” carries a whiff of something faintly ridiculous. (It doesn’t help that movements with “neo-” prefixed to them tend to be fringe phenomena.) “Neo-Latin” also misleadingly suggests an attempt to make a new version of something that no longer exists, though one could argue either that such a term could therefore be applied to all post-classical Latin or, alternately, that the very paradigm of living language vs. dead language is a Romanticist notion of dubious usefulness.

The problem with terminology stems from that fact that “Neo-Latin” is an overly literal translation of the German Neulatein, which means “Modern Latin,” just as Neuenglisch is “Modern English.” The implication of neu- is twofold: either something (usually a language) that is in its most recent phase of a continuous development, or (non-exclusively) something relating to the Modern era (die Neuzeit). Although the temporal boundaries of Neo-Latin are open to debate, the term might cover anything from Petrarch (1304–1374) to the present, though the term usually designates the flourishing of Latin in the period from 1400–1800. Why do so few of us read, and even fewer teach, Neo-Latin? One reason, and perhaps the most obvious, is philological snobbery. A regrettable but persistent feature of classical scholarship is the contempt for the failure to master and reproduce the rules of Classical Latin. We look down on those authors, like medieval ones, who “fail” to follow the classical standard, even if that standard did not exist for them.

This is a snobbery that we share with the Romans themselves, who could mercilessly mock lapses of Latinity. Yet we probably inherit this snobbery not from the Romans, but from the humanists of the Renaissance, who laid the foundation for our (humanistic) system of education, and who painstakingly reconstructed the Latin usage of antiquity. Lorenzo Valla, who famously exposed the Donation of Constantine as a forgery, attacked the Latinity of Poggio Bracciolini by composing a dialogue in which a stable boy and a cook corrected Poggio’s grammar. Poggio came to physical blows in the papal chancery with another humanist, George of Trebizond, over his reputation as a Latinist. During the course of the fight, Poggio rammed his index finger in George’s mouth to pinch his cheek and George considered biting it, though (as he later informed Poggio, highlighting his restraint) he chose not to do so (Walser 501–504).

Most of us have not, I think, seriously contemplated biting a rival’s finger in a dispute over Latin, nor usually have our own digits been in real danger. Yet the modern system of Latin education puts enormous emphasis on getting the grammatical minutiae right, and it’s easy for our sense of self-worth to get bound up in it. Most of us have probably had experiences in which we’ve felt shame at not understanding a piece of Latin grammar, or glory at getting a particularly sticky point right. It may not be a coincidence that new pedagogical approaches, which put less emphasis on the memorizing of paradigms, have also been more receptive to Neo-Latin (though I should note that I myself harbor some real reservations about abandoning the grammar-translation model).

And yet, philological snobbery can’t quite explain this omission. After all, Neo-Latin authors wrote in a Latin idiom that, to a remarkable degree, adhered to the standards of Classical Latin. Certainly they did so more than medieval authors, who still at least maintain a toe-hold in the curriculum.In his book The Lost Italian Renaissance, Christopher Celenza advanced a theory on systematic exclusion of Neo-Latin literature from the contemporary Academy. He argued that the converging trends of nationalist historiography and post-Enlightenment beliefs about language in the nineteenth century, at the time when the modern university developed, resulted in an exclusion of Latin from scholarly consideration. The view of language assumed by Enlightenment-era thinkers was that a nation’s character could be seen in its native language and literature.

Neo-Latin, which was nearly always a learned language, even for those who became fluent speakers, did not meet that qualification. This period was also the age of nationalist historiography, under whose paradigms Latin belonged to the ancient Roman people, and the vernaculars belonged to the modern era. The nineteenth-century paradigm of national literary history in fact caused nearly all post-classical Latin to receive less attention than it might, as Jan Ziolkowski has pointed out. Many scholarly projects have been funded not only by universities, but by governments and other local institutions, which have been especially interested in their own national literary histories. Since the era of post-classical Latin was also the era of the first flourishing of many vernaculars, the scholars of national literary traditions have often used Latin as a foil. In championing their own languages, they created a narrative in which innovative authors wrote in a vivid vernacular, in contrast to stodgier authors who wrote in a stilted Latin. (The reality was much to the contrary, as Tom Deneire and others have pointed out, and some of the most famous vernacular writers, like Dante and Petrarch, wrote in Latin as well.)So the nineteenth-century university had a void where Neo-Latin might have found a place, and this disciplinary void then perpetuated itself. In an era in which textual criticism flourished, Neo-Latin texts lay unedited. These unedited texts, naturally, did not find their way into many people’s hands, which further restricted their field of influence.

It is a particular irony that we don’t often teach the humanists of Renaissance Italy, since the very idea that there is such a thing as “Classical Latin” is a notion that we largely owe to them. It was among the humanists, starting especially with Petrarch, that the best Latin was decided to be the Latin of ancient Rome. It may seem obvious that a language’s “classical” period should be the time when it had native speakers, but that’s not the case with, for instance, Sanskrit and Prakrit. Beyond the notion of “Classical Latin,” it was through the labor of the fifteenth-century humanists that the rules and norms of Classical Latin were reconstructed. We owe them not just the idea that there is such a thing as Classical Latin, but also the detailed philological knowledge of what that Latin entailed.

This is not to say that Neo-Latin literature has been entirely ignored within the Academy. There has always been a small, though intellectually thriving, contingent of Neo-Latinists. (This group overlaps to some extent with the burgeoning spoken Latin movement, though the two are not coterminous.) As the literary quality and historical importance of Neo-Latin has become more widely known, the field has picked up steam, and the growth over the last twenty years has been truly explosive. Previously unedited texts have been appearing in critical editions and high quality translations. Panels at the SCS explore Neo-Latin literature and Early Modern reception. No less than four major handbooks on Neo-Latin have been published in the last four years: Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World (ed. P. Ford, J. Bloemendal, and C. Fantazzi), The Oxford Handbook of Neo-Latin (ed. S. Knight and S. Tilg), C.H. Beck’s Geschichte der neulateinischen Literatur (by M. Korenjak), and Cambridge’s Guide to Neo-Latin Literature (ed. V. Moul).

While Neo-Latin has been enjoying increased scholarly attention, it’s been slow to make its way into the classroom. Several obstacles seem to be in the way. The first problem is that those of us who teach Latin have mostly come up in traditional Classics departments, in which we rarely read something later than Augustine and never later than Petrarch. Second, even if we did want to teach Neo-Latin, there aren’t a lot of pedagogical resources available. Neo-Latin has no equivalent series to the Bristol blue commentaries, or the Cambridge green-and-yellows. Finally, it might seem that there is simply no room in the curriculum. It’s hard enough to make space for Martial and Juvenal, can we really afford to teach authors who weren’t even native speakers of Latin?

With regard to the first two problems, new pedagogical resources are happily becoming available, and they create a good introduction for Latinists with a purely classical background. The I Tatti series publishes facing Latin-English texts, much like Loebs. Rose Williams has published a Latin of New Spain student edition of texts from and about early modern Mexico. Mark Riley has put out an anthology, the Neo-Latin Reader, of around two dozen texts with helpful introductions. I’ve co-authored an intermediate-level reader that goes in depth into a single author, the humanist Bartolomeo Platina (the pdf is free). These three student editions have been published in just the last two years, and hopefully more will be forthcoming. (Incidentally, if you’re a Latinist looking for a project, you might want to consider making a student edition of a Neo-Latin text. The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies is especially interested in the creation of new editions, and it offers fellowships for grad students and post-docs.)

But is there any room for Neo-Latin in the curriculum? Some time ago I heard a senior scholar (of Neo-Latin, no less) state that “of course” a class on post-classical Latin could only happen every couple of years, and even then the slot should be shared with medieval Latin. “Otherwise” (to paraphrase his words) “when will students be reading Vergil?” While few would advocate dumping Vergil, it is perhaps time for Classics to rethink the chronological narrowness of its Latin canon, or at least to assess the value of including more non-canonical authors in the curriculum. A re-evaluation is particularly in order given that our field’s emphasis on the Latin of ancient Rome has a lot to do with assumptions inherited from those Neo-Latin authors that we don’t value enough to teach.

Even granting the importance of the canon and the limited space in the curriculum, I think a case for the inclusion of Neo-Latin could be made purely on the historical importance and literary quality of these texts. Leaving that aside, however, expanding the curriculum to include Neo-Latin also addresses two major challenges facing the field of Classics: the inclusiveness (or rather lack thereof) of Classical Studies and the rise of STEM dominance in the university.Classics has a reputation for being especially concerned with literature by and for European men. This reputation, while not entirely unjustified, is deceptive: the classical corpus pre-dates the notion of Europe (in its modern sense), and in fact a multiplicity of voices survives from antiquity. These voices give witness to very different conceptions of gender, ethnicity, and social group identity. At the same time, modern Europe has claimed classical antiquity as its cultural and intellectual foundation. So while classical antiquity did not choose Europe, so to speak, Europe did choose classical antiquity.

The corpus of Neo-Latin literature shows that it is not just Europe that can lay a claim to classical antiquity. Neo-Latin brings in voices from early modern Mexico and Brazil, from Japan and China. To be clear, these voices are generally part of the broader phenomenon of European colonization and Christian religious conversion, but they are important witnesses to these complex histories. Use of Latin was hardly a non-European phenomenon, but it was elite practice that, while largely used by European colonizers, was also sometimes appropriated by colonized communities and by those with mixed or non-European identities, who then employed it for their own purposes. Such was the case, for instance, for the Spanish-American creole community in eighteenth-century Mexico, as Andrew Laird has shown.

And while classical antiquity does give us access to different conceptions of gender, it certainly doesn’t give us access to the perspectives of many women. As far as female authors are concerned, Classical Latin is restricted almost entirely to the few elegies of Sulpicia. In the Neo-Latin world, on the other hand, Jane Stevenson’s Women Latin Poets alone covers about 300 (mostly Neo-Latin) authors. The addition of Neo-Latin to the curriculum will by no means solve the manifold problems of diversity and inclusion in Classical Studies, but it’s one step in the right direction. Another issue facing Classics is the rise of the STEM fields in universities, to some extent at the cost of the humanities. Yet if would-be scientists have to learn any language (and at most schools, at least for the present, they still do), Latin is in an enviable position to be the language to learn. Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, and Linnaeus all wrote in Latin. They don’t have a place in most Latin programs, but serious engagement with them might both attract more STEM-focused students, and provide those students a valuable tool for exploring the historical background and implicit assumptions of their own fields.

It remains to be seen whether the recent surge of scholarly interest in Neo-Latin will produce a lastingly larger place for it in the Academy. If it does, what might the consequences be? Should some of us be Latinists, instead of Classicists, and stretch our expertise to encompass the breadth of Latin literature rather than the Latin of classical antiquity? Should scholars of particular literary periods (e.g. Early Modern British literature) have equal expertise both in the vernacular and in the Neo-Latin literary production of their period? Should Neo-Latin be its own field, rather than an appendage of others? Those questions will largely be left up to our students. All the more reason to give them the full range of possibilities in the classroom.

Tom Hendrickson writes about book history and Latin from all eras. He is the author of Ancient Libraries and Renaissance Humanism and co-author of Bartolomeo Platina: Paul II, An Intermediate Reader of Renaissance Latin. Hendrickson teaches Latin and English at Stanford

CHURCH LATIN AND NEO-LATIN

The Church Latin exists for two thousand years. it is the Latin language as used by the Church of Rome. It starts with the translations of the Bible and the active correspondence and exchange of religious texts among early Christians. Aurelius Augustine, Tertulianus and Jerome, towering figures of the Christian world, are among the first to write in simple Latin having in mind Christian readers of the lowest social classes of the Roman Empire. Christianism became widespread in the third century and was made the official religion of the Empire by Justinian in the fifth.

"After the fall of Rome, the Church initiated the alphabetization and christianization of the whole Europe having the fifth century Latin as her instrument of communication. From the fall of the Western Roman Empire until the Reformation we have a time span of one thousand year. The Reformation that coincided and was boosted by the development of the printing press by Gutenberg, represents a turning point in the history of the Christian religion. The most representative figures of the 16th century Reformation, such as ( Erasmus), Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, Philip Melanchthon and John CalvinThe are in the very roots of Neo-Latin.

"The Renaissance humanism embraced a set of values or cultural and educational ideals, showing a marked interest in the Greek and Roman Antiquity, and the scholars of the time searched for the best means to improve human nature. They accurately sensed that the relationship of man with the divinity and his fellow humans can only undergo a change for the better by education; in addition, many of the famous philosophical and theological treatises of the time bore the title “institutio”, which may be translated by “education”.

"The logical conclusion may be that no change on a social-political or institutional level may be achieved unless preceded by a similar change in intellectual and spiritual education, prone to giving a new orientation to the attitude of man, created “ad imaginem Dei”, towards the world and life in general.The major role ascribed by the Reformers to learning classical languages may be explained not only by virtue of the well-known Renaissance recourse to the fascinating wisdom of the ancient Greek Roman world: the fathers of Protestantism wished to reach the state where any Christian would be literate, able to read the Bible in the original so that to find God’s will in regard to people and how far the tradition of the Church has strained from the divine commandments. (Mihai Androne)

It can be assumed that the Catholic Church could never have predicted the force of the Protestant Reformation. This is especially so in terms of the numbers of noblemen and other wealthy individuals who were attracted to the theology of Luther and Calvin. The Church did try respond but their response -- internal reform -- was weak. One reform did come, it came from man who was not even a member of the clergy. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) was a soldier and Spanish reformer who sought to create a new religious order. He fused the best of the humanist tradition of the Renaissance with a reformed Catholicism that he hoped would appeal to powerful economic and political groups, that is, those types of people now attracted to Luther and Calvin.

Founded in 1534, the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits, formed the backbone of the Catholic or Counter Reformation. The Jesuits combined the ideas of traditional monastic discipline with a dedication to teaching and preaching. Why they did this is pretty clear -- they wanted to win back converts. As a brotherhood or society, the Jesuits sought to bypass local corruption and appealed to the papacy to leading international movement -- they would not attach themselves to local bishops or local authorities. The purpose of this international movement was to revive a Catholic or universal Christianity.